Living with the LTE bump in a data-capped world

From the moment I first tested it on early Verizon phones, I fell in love with LTE, the 4G mobile data technology being adopted by the cell phone industry. LTE, which stands for Long Term Evolution, makes mobile access competitive with traditional broadband. There are times when the LTE service on my iPhone is faster than my Comcast Internet account at home.

There’s a common assumption that a faster data connection automatically equates to using more data. To a certain extent, that’s a fallacy. Just because you can access data faster doesn’t mean you’re sure to pull in more data. But there are two caveats to this:

1. Some video services look at the speed of your connection and provide you with a higher-quality stream if you have a zippy one. Amazon.com and Netflix both do this. Netflix provides you with a way to manually control the quality of the stream, which can keep data usage relatively low. More on that in a moment.

2. If you avoided bandwidth-intensive applications on your smartphone because you had a frustrating, slow 3G connection, you may find yourself more willing to use those applications with a faster phone. For example, if you didn’t watch video much, you might with an LTE-capable device because the experience is much better.

In other words, whether you use a lot more data – and thus possibly exceed your account’s data cap – largely depends on your behavior.

After using an iPhone 5 since late September, I can testify to this. Using LTE has changed my data-usage habits to a certain extent. Take a look at this chart from my AT&T account’s data usage history. You can see what happened when I starting using an LTE-capable smartphone, and what’s happened since.

I got my iPhone 5 on Sept. 21. Prior to that, the data usage on my grandfathered, unlimited AT&T account was fairly low. I have access to Wi-Fi both at home and at work, so any cellular data usage happened when I was away from those locations.

October saw a huge jump in data usage, and a lot of that was my testing my new phone’s capabilities. For example, I gave a variety of speed test sites and apps a real workout. I also tested video from several sources.

But I also began to watch more video. I go to the gym at least four times a week, part of a weight-loss regimen started two years ago. To keep myself occupied while on the treadmill or the elliptical, I watch video. I plowed through all 10 seasons of the British spy series “MI-5”, and now I’m working my way through AMC’s “Sons of Anarchy.” Sometimes, I’d use LTE-equipped review smartphones I was testing, but more often I’d use the iPhone 4 I had at the time.

Once I got my own LTE phone, I cut back on the review devices for gym video. Still, I was worried about bumping into the 5-gigabyte ceiling at which AT&T starts throttling its unlimited accounts that use LTE (the limit is 3 GB for 3G phones).

That is, until I discovered the aforementioned Netflix feature that lets you dial back the quality of the service’s video stream. If you have a Netflix account, you can find it here.

The lowest setting, “Good quality,” works quite well on a phone. I’m usually watching for about 45 minutes (about the length of time for an hour-long show sans commercials), which comes in well under 0.3 GB an hour.

I discovered this feature in November, which helped me save lots of data. The chart above isn’t up to date, but I just completed my current AT&T billing cycle, and I used just 2.6 GB of data from Dec. 22-Jan. 22 – and that’s while watching a lot of video.

Contrast this with my wife’s account. She also has an iPhone 5, and has access to Wi-Fi at home and work. She never watches video – except for the occasional YouTube clip – and her main online usage comes from a unhealthy obsession with Words With Friends. Here’s here data usage chart for the past year.

She got her iPhone 5 in mid-October. The bump in the November billing period came from a road trip we took to Missouri, where Wi-Fi was seldom available. (The other bumps in the chart coincide with other trips.) She’s on the 2 GB data plan for AT&T, and just having LTE has not brought her anywhere near that cap.

I do believe that LTE is a game-changer when it comes to mobile, but having an LTE-based phone doesn’t mean you’ll blow through your data caps. Being aware of your own behavior, using Wi-Fi whenever you can and keeping an eye out for features such as Netflix’s quality settings can keep the joy of LTE from turning to horror when your bill arrives.

Dwight Silverman | Techblogger, social media manager

Connect

Upgrade your geek with Dwight Silverman

Search TechBlog

Keyword search across all the entries in this blog.

Categories

Categories

Search TechBlog by month/year

Search TechBlog by month/year

Browse previous blog posts by month and year of entry. You'll see all the posts for that time period.

Select Month

Show Earlier

Browse previous blog posts by month and year of entry. You'll see all the posts for that time period.